 Launched high above the clouds and filtering atmosphere on February 14, 1980, the Solar Maximum Observatory is a source of very detailed information about the Sun. For the first nine months of the planned two-year mission, the satellite collected spectacular new data. Hundreds of scientists gathered at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland and had ground observatories around the world to study the Sun and solar flares. Scientists made numerous discoveries and raised many new questions about the Sun. Then, in late 1980, three fuses failed in the Attitude Control Subsystem module. This meant that the satellite could no longer point precisely at the observation areas on the Sun. Fortunately, Solar Max was the first of a new breed of satellites built of standardized components and designed to be repaired in space. The faulty Attitude Control module is one of the three replaceable box-like units that control power, command functions, and the positioning of the satellite. These units are part of the Multimission Modular Spacecraft, or MMS, which makes up the lower portion of the Solar Max satellite. The upper portion, the observatory, contains seven different instruments for solar research. However, a considerable amount of planning and preparation had to be accomplished before that repair could occur. The Solar Maximum Repair Mission in 1984 chalked up a number of space flight firsts. These successes were possible because of some of the unique management approaches and decisions made back in the late 1960s and early 1970s. Certainly, there must be some very interesting management lessons learned from the MMS and Solar Max experience. I'm Dutch von Erntree on behalf of the NASA Program and Project Management Training and Development Initiative. Now let's go to Goddard Space Flight Center and get some insight on the MMS from Frank Sepulina, the project manager for the MMS. Thanks for joining us. Sepi, what were some of the more dominant management challenges that allowed for the development of the modular spacecraft? Well, Dutch, the most dominant challenge was the desire to try to fly more science at less cost. In the period of the late 60s, inflation was beginning to skyrocket. The Apollo program was coming down, phasing down. Along with it, the budgets were dropping off. And yet, from a scientific taste or desire or flavor, we were getting many, many good new missions to fly and searching desperately to find the dollars as an agency to fly those new scientific missions. And that was really the challenge that we as a center try to step up to since we are a scientific space flight center. Well, how can you answer a question like that? Well, when I think back, I'm amazed at how it came out. But in fact, the aspects of answering it took four years of very, very hard work and an intense team of experienced scientists and engineers. The Den Center director in 1970 formalized such a team and challenged them basically to look at what are the elements of spacecraft cost and how could we, in fact, reduce those costs. That team concentrated on looking at the spacecrafts of the 1960s, the 150 to 180 some-odd spacecrafts that NASA had designed, built and launched in that decade. And they focused not so much with the design characteristics of the spacecrafts but rather with the design characteristics as how they related to cost and the cost aspects. And then finally, with that database, we went to private industry and we did some rather significant economic studies focusing on design parameters as a function of cost. Well, what were some of the findings of those studies? Well, Dutch, there were four major findings of the studies. The first one, not so surprising, said that in the period of the 60s we did not have any significant commonality of spacecrafts. The second findings said that even though we had point design spacecrafts within those spacecrafts were, in fact, a lot of common boxes, black boxes, equipment. And the third finding, which was probably the most significant from a cost containment point of view was the fact that almost the vast majority of the spacecraft developments we were spending anywhere from 33% to 60% of the total program cost in the integration and test phase of the spacecraft. That in itself highlighted something that perhaps we could deal with from a new spacecraft architecture, new spacecraft design. And in effect, it really said we were spending a lot of time reinventing the spacecraft wheels when, in fact, the only thing that was changing was the outside architecture of the spacecraft. The last point was the point that kind of gave us credence for a multi-mission capability and that is that for most of those 150 to 180 missions many of those could be synthesized into four different performance categories. And if somehow we could design a spacecraft that could meet the performance requirements of those four categories, we had the essence of the system which would not necessitate, so to speak, reinventing the spacecraft for those four types of missions. But what were some of the programmatic issues in the environment that allowed for the acceptance of the modular spacecraft concept? I guess that could be summarized by one word, that word was skepticism. There was a tremendous amount of skepticism. Although people saw our economic studies, saw the cost benefits that emulated from those studies the most significant problem that we had was what we were proposing was a revolutionary spacecraft. And in proposing a revolutionary spacecraft, there's always this fear that, A, it may not work technically once it's put in orbit, the risk is very high. And the second point is the fact that in the development process it may not be feasible to contain the cost growth. They run into new technological problems that had never been faced before. So we had to focus over that four or five year period in dealing with our critics in attempting to answer those four major problems, those questions of cost containment, of skepticism, of performance, of risk assessment, risk management. Well, Seppy, what was the influence of Apollo and Shuttle on your program at that time? I think we can best answer that question if we walk up now to the Shuttle Bay trainer and take a look at our latest MMS spacecraft that's been delivered from the production line. Now that we're up here, Dutch, I think I can better explain the impact and the influences of both the Apollo and the Shuttle program had on our spacecraft architecture. Perhaps the most single critical dilemma that was posed to us in the early 70s was the dilemma of having to deal with how to shuttle eyes and make our spacecraft systems serviceable. One of the most fundamental problems that we had was that all our economic studies were showing, study after study after study, the advantages from a cost control point of view and from a serviceability point of view of repairing, servicing, changing out payloads on orbit for these spacecrafts. By the same token, the experience factor that the agency had had on the Apollo program was the very high cost of man rating equipment. And our customers view this as basically a very serious cost control problem. And we had to hit this problem very hard and we had to hit it hard, head on and deal with it on a point by point basis. What we did basically was to rely very heavily on a very significant series of economic studies that dealt not so much with serviceability, but with how to build a lower cost, better architecture, multi-mission type of spacecraft system. And what we did with our customers was convince them that whether we serviced on orbit or not, whether we launched on a shuttle or launched on a conventional launch vehicle and our spacecraft was architecture to fly either way, fly on a Delta, fly on a Titan or even or fly on a shuttle. Regardless of the method of launch, regardless of whether one considered serviceability or not, the architecture of the spacecraft was such that its economies were significantly lower by virtue of the fact that we in fact did make it modular and easy to assemble and test on the ground. And therefore, because we reduced that integration and test timeline, we were able to save some 30 to 40 percent of a typical program cost by negating the need for, first of all, redeveloping of the spacecraft and then shortening a typical spacecraft's integration and test time with the observatory instruments. And that was the fundamental approach by which we hit this problem. And eventually, I think that particular approach did persist and we were finally able to convince our customers that that was the better way to go. Well, Sepe, what were some of the aspects of those economic studies? Well, there were eight economic studies run during the 1970 to 1975 period. And the majority of the economic studies dealt with the level of spacecraft modularity from an economic point of view, from a lower cost possible point of view. We dealt with trying to understand the economic implication of making an entire spacecraft modular and throw awayable or replaceable at the spacecraft level. The next level down was at the subsystem level. And then we looked at the individual component modularity that is making individual components removable and replaceable. The most significant economic study of all, that is when I say significant, I mean that had the most impact and influence with our potential customers, was the Aerospace Corporation study that dealt not with servicing, but with the economic benefits associated with having a standard modular spacecraft that could accommodate four or five different sets of missions without redevelopment and that could be assembled by virtue of its modularity on the ground significantly faster and therefore less expensive. That study highlighted the key that our customers were really looking for, the potential of a 30 to 40% savings for each of the specific missions that would use a so-called standard or common spacecraft buzz. Well, what were some of the conclusions of those studies? The conclusions, especially the Aerospace conclusion, led our customers to forget about the, sort of speak, the risks associated with servicing. They sort of put servicing requirements out of their mind and it was very nice for them to say we won't do anything to preclude servicing but by the same token we won't have to spend any money at making a system serviceable because modularity and rapid ground integration and test breeds ease of servicing on orbit. And I think of all the conclusions that one could draw, that was the one that really put the message across to our customers and everybody could, sort of speak, be the Maytag, could watch the Maytag repairman leaning on his washing machine and should the day ever arise that we did have to conduct an emergency repair maintenance, the system could in fact be compatible to do it. Was it really difficult selling upper management? Well, I guess I would have to say yes since it took us five years to do that. I think that in looking back in the process of trying to convince upper management we had to deal with some very specific questions and convince the upper management at NASA headquarters that this plunge was worth their investment and was worth taking a risk to do. And the way we did that was first of all find that first willing customer, that first program who by either necessity or by cost constraints was willing to join with us and that program happened to be the SolarMax mission spacecraft program. The process by which we sold them on the approach was first of all we convinced them that we could launch on any launch vehicle that we did not have to wait for the shuttle. We could launch on a Delta or a Titan. And the next process was the process of convincing that program office that we could manage the technological risk by virtue of the amount of breadboarding and technology testing we were doing here on the ground that got it over this five year period. The last aspect had to do with our convincing Noel Hinners that from a SolarMax observatory point of view, from an agency point of view, from a futuristic thinking that on orbit servicing down the pike, a modular spacecraft up front, a more economical approach for not just the SolarMax mission but for Landsat missions and future UARS missions and so on, that a common spacecraft that could take care of four or five different types of mission constraints, requirements and configurations would be best for the agency. And Noel Hinners had the wisdom to step up to that and said, yes, we will take the plunge. We will go with this process. We're fortunate to have with us today Dr. Noel Hinners, the Associate Deputy Administrator of NASA, and Dr. Anthony Calio, the Vice President for Management and Operations at the Planning Research Corporation. In October of 1976, Dr. Hinners, the Goddard team working a new breed of spacecraft called the Multimission Modular Spacecraft, came to NASA headquarters to see if they can get a decision to use the SolarMax mission with the MMS spacecraft. What were some of the factors that you had to consider in making that decision? That's when the Goddard folks came down to headquarters talking about the MMS approach. Right off the bat, it was more than just the SolarMax mission. They do realize that it had a potential for lots of missions and in fact that was one of the benefits being advertised for the MMS approach, that you use the same basic design for many missions. I'll come back to that. We had though at the time something called the Low Cost Systems Office under the Chief Engineer Walt Williams at that time. They did the basic economic studies of the MMS and concluded that if you were to do just one, you wouldn't really reap the benefits of it, but that if you could buy a block of four or five spacecraft, that's when you'd really see the return on the investment. Now, we realize that the intangibles were going to save money also, not just the acquisition, but the common design, common components, despairing philosophy and the fact that the modular approach, the serviceability, would let you do the testing on the ground in a lot easier way than typically from the inside out. But then we came up against our friends over at OMB, the Office of Management and Budget. They understood the concept and said, fine, we'll let you go ahead with the SolarMax mission and the MMS, but we're not going to approve a block by a five spacecraft. Their argument was that we didn't have mission approval for the other four spacecraft. Even though we could say we know things are coming downstream, we typically get a new mission approved every year, that didn't wash with them. So they approved it only for the SolarMax mission at that time and Landsat just had to wait until this time came. And the Landsat subject brings us to you, Dr. Calio. At the time you were working with Dr. Hinners on this project, but we're not yet the Associate Administrator for Earth Applications, the office that would later have responsibility for that spacecraft. Now, what were some of the considerations that you had to make in this decision, in that time frame? October 76, I believe one of the problems that was going on was another budget issue. Even though all of us trained by NASA know the importance of balancing performance costs and schedule, Landsat was having a difficult time with the Office of Management and Budget because the project was not approved the way it was originally proposed by NASA that it was to carry two instruments, a multispectral scanner, which was the old instrument, and a new thematic mapper. It was believed at that point in time that if it was an experimental program that the thematic mapper was the only instrument that was needed and the multispectral scanner was not needed. The project was in the throes of being redefined between NASA and the Office of Management and Budget. So it was unclear what the spacecraft design would be. Secondly, if we had to go to such a design for any spacecraft, whether it was a space science or an application spacecraft, it would have to be dual compatible because if it were to fly on the shuttle ultimately, it would also have to, in the early years, fly on an expendable launch vehicle. And then finally, for those who were interested in polar orbits, we would have to fly out of the western test range so that it would have to be compatibility with that facility. So this presented a number of uncertainties for a whole series, then, of spacecraft that were being considered at that period of time. Well, in summary, considering that whole timeframe from 76 on to when solar and mags flew, what kind of lessons learned can you share with the current and new managers within NASA? Well, the Goddard team back in 77, as they have been in the past and continue to be, had great ideas. And the idea of the multi-mission spacecraft was a very creative one. And the second part of it was they were very persistent with that whole notion of getting the multi-mission spacecraft flown. I was not a supporter at the time. And it turned out through their bright ideas and their persistence or tenacity, persevered. And we got to see in the 1984 timeframe through the recovery of the Solar Max mission and its retrofitting and placing it back into service that the concept that they had, a good concept, well thought out, well engineered with the persistence of that team is leading the way for the future to the space station and to the shuttle. So it was a good idea and with good ideas staying with it, I think is an important point for NASA engineers to consider. Well, Dr. Hinters, what kind of summary lessons learned would you like to pass on to the new managers? I think there are a number there. Tony touched on several of them. Clearly having a solid technical product to sell has to be number one. Without that, forget it. Then once you get past that, you've got to have a salesman. And I'll put it that way. You're out there in the field. You've got to come in and convince a range of people here at headquarters and organizations. First you've got the program office. I say the program office. That's your first customer. But then on something like the MMS, which went across many program offices, you had to touch base with many and get people to understand that there was a payoff coming together on something like the MMS. Then you had to work the controller's office. You had to work the low-cost systems office. And you had to get over and work OMB. So you've got to understand when you're out in the field that you can't go to one point headquarters, but you've got to play across the board and aggregate the support for what you're trying to do. Tony mentioned being tenacious. In this project, I think you've seen almost the ultimate. Tenacious, yes, a leader. And in SEPI, we've got that. SEPI is a bulldog. I can still feel the teeth marks up here in the neck. He doesn't let go. SEPI so believed that what he was doing was right. After spending a while with him, he just fell in and said, yeah, he's right. The other thing he did, of course, and his team was that they produced. They promised a certain product on a schedule, and they brought it in. And we're seeing that now through the rest of the program. Even though we started with just Solar Max, it did get used for Landsat. It became used on the upper hemisphere research satellite. There are components of it, modules on it on the gamma ray observatory, and there are pieces of it in the space telescope. And it really has formed the basis for a lot of our thinking on the polar platform for the space station. There's one last thing. The Goddard management at the time gave SEPI a lot of leeway in the project. They believed in it and said, go to it. So it was an environment which encouraged that innovation. And that's something we've got to be sure we keep up so that these bright ideas can surface in the system, get through and get solved. Thank you very much, Dr. Hinners and Dr. Callio. I'm sure that the NASA workforce, and especially the young NASA managers, have a better appreciation for how management decisions are made at the associate administrator level. Thank you very much. And now let's go to Goddard Space Flight Center and see the multi-mission modular spacecraft. Well, Savvy, what was the impact of the failure of the Solar Max spacecraft on your program? Well, looking back in time, I feel that the impact of Solar Max failure, in fact the fine-pointing failure of the attitude control subsystem, represented both a tragedy and a triumph. A tragedy in the sense that we launched the spacecraft with two years of observation objectives, and after the first year we lost our fine-pointing. We had all these solar physicists and ground-based observatories all over the world making simultaneous observations with the Solar Max physicist here at Goddard to uncover some of the big secrets of solar flare theory. When we lost fine-pointing, we lost much of that capability. And I think that was certainly an adversity. On the other hand, by virtue of the fact that we had designed the spacecraft which in fact was serviceable on orbit since we had built this flight support system to go up and take care of that problem, and since we had the desire as an agency to basically put our faith in the transportation system which we said could do repair and should do repair of satellites in orbit, we put all those aspects together just doing, going forward, represented a confidence, represented an objective for the agency of meeting its goal, of understanding where the development of resources and what their intention was in the first place and bringing all elements of the agency together, the land-space flight, transportation element, the scientist, the observatory builders, bringing them all together and doing a very successful repair mission represented a significant triumph. And all that one has to do is look at what happened in the next 12 months after the successful Solar Max repair mission. First of all, we did, retrieved two spacecrafts, West Star and Palapa, which are going to be relaunched. Next, we repaired Syncom 4 and put it up into orbit into its operational regime where it's working fine to this day. Solar Max, which was repaired in 1984, is working fine and still collecting very valuable scientific data and in fact, for the last four and a half to five years has been operating fine and being able to collect some significant scientific data as the solar cycle is going back up. And I think you put all those aspects together, it represented this triumph aspect as well as the adversity aspect. Was that looking back to 1970 when your challenge was to get more science for less cost? What advice can you give your new project managers and what have you learned? Well, I think in terms of what have we learned and what the accomplishments have been, looking back and looking first of all here at UARS which represents the sixth or seventh production spacecraft common to several different missions and even more importantly the fact that this particular ACS subsystem was the one that flew for four years on Solar Max was brought back from space and refurbished at 25 to 30% of the cost of a new spacecraft and now will be flying again on a spacecraft almost three times more complicated and expensive. I think that that basically is indicative of the fact that we have accomplished the goal of reducing cost of future missions by virtue of our being able to build and serve as common modular spacecrafts on the ground and relaunch and maintain some form of a standard spacecraft production base and I think that I feel very good about that accomplishment. I think as far as the lessons learned for future project managers the most fundamental reality today is that the cost pressures of the 80s and the 90s are even more severe than the cost pressures of the 70s and for a project manager to effectively be able to cost manage and schedule manage a program he's got to be dogmatically pragmatic he's got to make hard decisions on trade-offs between cost and performance and schedule and those trade-offs have to be made in a rather timely fashion today much more so I believe than they were in the period of the 70s. I think that by the same token that project manager today has to be an astute philosophical leader he cannot be afraid of basically grabbing the cutting edge of technology in any given area whether it be in the scientific instrument area or in the spacecraft performance area and moving ahead with that technology without fear he's got to be determined he's got to be an astute philosophical leader and he's got to bring his team along with him in order to make true progress in this space arena. Project management is really a bottom-line art form of leading a group of technical and business people into accomplishing a common goal and that the success that a project manager can have is directly dependent on what I call the three P's of project management persistence, patience and people dedication. Project managers got to have that goal he's got to have a fervent desire and demonstrate that fervent desire of accomplishing that goal and finally Dutch the most important point of all is that a project manager cannot succeed unless he can inspire his team of technical and business experts to follow him and that's what project management I think is all about. Well Sepe thank you very much for your help and your guidance and wisdom and on behalf of the NASA program and project management training and development initiative I want to thank you and your Goddard team and the NASA headquarters team for making this training film possible. Well Dutch thank you very much I thoroughly enjoyed it. It was a real pleasure. I did too. Thank you. You have just seen a NASA pilot video program prepared as part of the program and project management training and development initiative. This video series is intended to be a vehicle through which former and present NASA managers can share their experiences with other employees especially those interested in management. The video programs in this series focus on the exchange of approaches and the informal communication of various NASA project management styles. The video programs are geared to gathering and sharing the individual and team experiences and lessons learned from the managers of past NASA projects. Hopefully these experiences will be useful to the future cadre of managers. Each program in the series will document one project in an educational format containing a brief history or summary of the project followed by a discussion on how these people managed and overcame their program obstacles. The audience will be introduced to different real-life project scenarios and through the videos will better understand why certain management approaches were selected and why some styles have been more successful than others. Each program will discuss detailed information about the project's objectives and history as told by the project managers themselves. The audience for this series is the NASA program and project management workforce especially the new less experienced managers who may not be familiar with the details of past projects. This program will bring together NASA's seasoned professionals and capture many of their projects in brief visual learning sessions which will be made available to a broad audience. We hope this series will aid in the development of a corporate memory that will benefit both current and future generations of NASA personnel. Thanks for listening and be sure to watch for the next video program in this series.